Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

The Supreme Court may be only one vote away from a wide expansion of the constitutional right to obtain a gun, and that prospect will get a test today when the Justices go to the bench for a historic hearing.  The Court opened its new term yesterday. At the center of the new gun rights… Read More

A political catastrophe, and maybe a legal catastrophe, struck former President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon, and he has little time and perhaps little opportunity to overcome the impact. With just 34 days to go before the presidential election on November 5, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., allowed the publication of a 165-page document… Read More

Mounting a broad new challenge to prosecution of Donald Trump for attempting to stay in power in 2021, the former President’s lawyers urged a federal judge on Thursday to stop that case before it goes any further. At the center of the new filing, made public Friday, is a claim that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith… Read More

A state judge in New York City on Friday, issuing a ruling that seemed to make him uncomfortable, put off until after the November 5 election the sentencing of former President Donald Trump for 34 guilty verdicts. Although Judge Juan M. Merchan said, in a four-page ruling, that he was acting to avoid affecting the… Read More

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday failed in his latest attempt to prevent a state judge in New York from imposing a sentence for the 34 guilty verdicts arising out of a sex scandal surrounding his presidential election campaign in 2016. In a brief, four-page ruling, a federal judge in New York City refused to… Read More

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump, vowing multiple legal challenges to his prosecution for the violent January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his attempt to stay in office after being defeated, asked a federal judge late Friday night to set a schedule that would keep the case going at least through January 2025…. Read More

Former President Donald Trump, conceding that he may be sent to prison in the midst of his election campaign, went to a federal court on Thursday night seeking to put off any sentencing for his 34 guilty verdicts in New York state court. In a 64-page filing by his legal defense team, Trump asked a… Read More

(NOTE: Post updated to include additional detail.) New York prosecutors chose on Monday to leave it to the trial judge in Donald Trump’s state criminal case to decide either to delay or to go ahead with imposing a sentence next month — a decision with significant political and legal meaning. The district attorney’s new filing,… Read More

UPDATE: This is an expended version of an earlier post.) Continuing to use his political candidacy as a legal shield, former President Donald Trump has asked a New York state court judge to delay until after the election a decision on his sentencing on 34 criminal convictions. In a letter Wednesday to Judge Juan M…. Read More

The nation’s largest legal organization, the American Bar Association, moved this week to use its influence to try to put into the U.S. Constitution a strong guarantee of equal rights for women. In a vote at the annual meeting in Chicago of the ABA’s policymaking arm, the House of Delegates, the lawyers’ group approved a… Read More